9/14/2009 @ 6:00PM

'Avatar' On Two Screens

In the future, Hollywood and videogame casts and crews will be one and same, working side by side on one integrated team–at least if the vision of Kevin Shortt comes to pass.

Shortt is the lead scriptwriter at French game publisher Ubisoft, which collaborated with filmmaker James Cameron to make a videogame based on his upcoming sci-fi battle epic Avatar. The videogame is scheduled for release Nov. 24; the movie is slated for December.

Convergence between Hollywood and the videogame industry has been happening for years, with big-budget games utilizing the same techniques, software and production values as blockbuster films, and actors and directors increasingly becoming involved with videogame projects. Shortt talked to Forbes about what the collaboration with Cameron was like, as well as what the two industries can learn from each other.

Forbes: What was the collaborative experience like working on “Avatar”?

Kevin Shortt: It was an excellent experience; this is what film-game relationships should be like. What made this particularly unique was that we started working on the game at the same time the studio started working on the film, instead of us being tacked on at the end, which happens a fair bit. I suspect that’s why some movie games in the past have felt like quick jobs–because they were–whereas for us, the collaboration started really early on.

How did the close collaboration benefit the making of the game?

Right from the beginning, James Cameron said, “I don’t want a repeat of the movie in the game. I want to expand the world of Avatar.” That’s where we came in, where we could add this whole other layer and reveal a lot more of the world than you can ever actually see in the movie.

So it was definitely important for us to be there from the ground up. And they sent us everything: they sent the script, and all sorts of images and models. We used all that to create the world of Avatar in the game. And as things were changing on their end, we adapted on our end; ideas that we had, they were able to feed off as well. It just makes for a better project overall.

Will this collaboration model be useful for future projects?

Certainly for Ubisoft, that’s the model we want to use. You just get so much more out of it, you’re not rushing a project, you’re working closely with film people and they’re working closely with you. If we want to reach this great idea of “convergence,” this is finally what it’s all about.

This is just the first step, and an important step to us, as to where things should go in our relationship with Hollywood, and how things can go. It feel like the sky’s the limit right now.

What needs to happen on the Hollywood side to make this collaboration work?

They need to be there and they need to be invested in it. Going back to my experience with “Avatar,” I worked a lot with producer Jon Landau, and he got right in there: He’s playing the game, telling me what he likes and telling me about what recent changes they made to the movie so we could also change the game.

The audience knows. They can pick this stuff up right away, whether the two sides have been working together. It’s critical; if you want these two media to work together, you have to have the people work together.

What is the current state of convergence between Hollywood and the videogame industry, and where do you see it going?

We’ve made some important steps, but we have a long way to go. Eventually down the road, teams will really be overlapping and even in the same building.

We’re going to come to a point where it’s not only a convergence of ideas, but a convergence of people.

What would you say to those who aren’t so eager for convergence to happen?

Once people start seeing some solid successes out of this, they’ll start realizing the opportunities. Sigourney Weaver’s a good example; she was saying this was the first videogame she’d ever done. I think that bias against videogames is going to go away for sure; it’s just a question of things being familiar.

What do films need to learn from videogames?

I think the big thing that films need to learn from games is interactivity. We know it really well. And I’m not just saying that films need to become more interactive. If films are looking for opportunities to expand their universe, games know really well how to attract and engage users and build on that world.

And what can videogames learn from films?

It certainly goes both ways. One of the things we’re still wrestling with in games is, “What’s the best way to tell our story?” Films are really solid at that. They have an economy of storytelling; they can get a lot said with so little.

In games, we still rely on our little scripted cinematics. It’s something we want to get away from, because it’s borrowing a little too much from film. We can find a better way to tell our own unique, interactive stories.

On that note, what does “Avatar” the game do differently from other videogames?

We made an effort to avoid scripted cinematics as much as we could. We didn’t avoid them 100%, but we minimized them and we tell most of our story inside the game and through the action that the player is living.

Does convergence work better for some types of movies than others?

I think in any context, there’s an opportunity for collaboration. It all depends on what sort of game you want to put out, or vice versa. I don’t think there’s any topic that’s off limits. It just depends on how you approach it and what you’re hoping to get out of both

If you could jump ahead to the future of convergence, what would you want to see?

It would be exciting to jump ahead and be at that point where we’ve cracked storytelling in the games. In the “Avatar” collaboration, though we worked really closely, we were still two separate teams. I would also love to see down the road where we’re all just one team that’s centralized, we’re all overlapping and that line between us just vanishes.